Tuesday, July 15, 2014

We had the honor of going on a Waibel family vacation this year to Tennessee. Thanks to mom and dad for using points to their timeshare and getting this all together to make it happen. Such a fun time and many memories made.

Busy watching a movie as we travel.

Morning breakfast. We stayed with mom and dad in a three bedroom condo. Kelli's and Aj's stayed together in a different three bedroom condo.

Time to hit the pools!!

Indoor Surfing!! They loved it.

Our Condo faced this water park area. We were on the ground floor so it made for easy access to this park. What a plus!!!

Ellie didn't want much of anything to do with the water, UNTIL the very last day she decided getting wet wasn't so bad. We even got her to go down a slide by herself (and she did it probably a couple dozen times). She found grandma's goggles and wanted those on too.

This was the outdoor wave pool and lazy river. Spent much time here.

One day Dad and Mom treated us all to Go Karts for the day. We had a wristband so we could come and go as we pleased. We were there for several hours(4 I think) as we all raced around tracks. Ellie unfortunently couldn't ride a single ride(which I thought was silly since there were definitely kid friendly rides for her there).

Vrooooom!!!!

There was one race track that was for little tikes like Liam and Austin. They enjoyed getting to drive their own cars.

Ellie and mom just sitting around waiting for others to ride the rides.

Bumper Boats

Mom and Dad had went to the outlet mall for a few hours while the kids swam. She came back with matching dresses for the girls. To cute!!!

Vacation was a blast and everyone headed home, except last minute we decided we might as well extend our trip. We had read in the newspaper that Nashville, TN was one of the top places for fireworks. Well, since we were 3 hours from Nashville and it was only Friday why not extend our vacation?? So when everyone left on Friday morning at 10am we headed over to the outlet mall for several hours. Then we drove to Knoxville to meet up with our "old" neighbors whom I miss dearly. We met them at Brusters ice cream for an hour then drove on to Nashville.

WOW.....so many people!! We walked around wondering where on earth was a good place to watch fireworks? We ended up finding this road and it seemed like it could possibly be a good place?? So we set up "camp" (two blankets from our car) and sat for over 3 hours waiting for the fireworks to begin. Within those 3 hours hundreds of people started sitting around us and before long the street was unable to be passed thru. FILLED with people!!!

We got some italian ice for the kids to help pass time.

Ahhhhh....its finally getting dark!!! We are very ready for the fireworks to begin at this point.

And what a show it was. Over 30,000 shells are released. We were in PRIME spot where the fireworks went off directly across the river from us (where the stadium is). The only negative thing about our location was that we could not hear the orchastra playing as it was synced with the fireworks. Non the less it was the best fireworks we have ALL seen.

Ellie stayed like this the entire time. They were loud. In fact, more than once both nick and I commented on how it was vibrating our own bodies from all the loud booms that went off. I felt like a few of the fireworks were so close they could land on us. A great show indeed!!!

It was a 30 minute firework show of NONSTOP fireworks. It took us less than 30 minutes to get out of the mass of people and cars and back onto the interstate but within 5 minutes this is what Ellie looked like:). She was exhausted!! We drove for an hour(1 am) and then spent the night in Bowling Green, KY....then headed home on Saturday.

What a wonderful vacation!! Looking forward to many more!! Thanks again Dad and Mom.